RapidEye Completes Second Coverage of China in Two Years

Geospatial solutions provider RapidEye recently announce that the second coverage of China for the Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) in as many years has been delivered.

The imagery campaign, which ran from August 1, 2010 through January 11, 2011 was intended to cover almost 5.8 million square kilometers, or 60% of the country. The project was successfully delivered and accepted by the MLR in the first week of February.

RapidEye is also very close to completing an additional project for the State Bureau of Mapping and Surveying (a branch of the MLR) where an area of over 920,000 square kilometers is being imaged. The imaging campaign includes selected areas that are notoriously cloudy, which makes successful collection challenging.

“This is where the RapidEye system really shines,” said Massimiliano Vitale, the Head of Operations at RapidEye. “When there is a forecasted day with very few clouds, we image the next time the satellites come around which is always less than 24 hours away. Other commercial systems would need days to return to an area. We have also perfected our ability to process and deliver so many square kilometers of imagery to a client in such a short time. Almost 6 Million square kilometers is a massive amount of data and that sort of collection activity must be highly orchestrated and organized.“

Previously, the MLR, a government entity in China responsible for planning, administration, protection and rational utilization of the country’s natural resources, contracted RapidEye to deliver 80% (7.8 Million km²) of China over the same time frame last year.

During each collection of China for the MLR, RapidEye delivered the bulk of the project several weeks ahead of schedule and with an average cloud cover of 5%; half of what originally had been requested by the customer.

To read about the details of the 2009-2010 collection of China in the RapidEye / MLR Customer Reference, click this link: http://bit.ly/d4mcYV.